Women working in munitions factories

Above: Staff at the National Explosives Factory, Hayle, with the shells that they were producing

It was dirty, exhausting, stressful, poisoned you, and was seriously hazardous….

Cornwall’s 4,000 or so “munitionettes” proved vital to Britain’s war effort from 1914-1918.

But danger was ever-present. On 20th December 1916 four munitions workers – including two girls – were killed in an explosion in the National Explosive Factory cordite presses in Hayle.

Pals May Stoneman and Cissie Rogers of Copperhouse were buried alongside each other in Phillack Cemetery. Cissie’s headstone records she “lost her life on war work”, May’s that she died “while doing her duty for her country”.

They were 20 and 21 years old. For a photogallery of the National Explosives Factory today, click here.

It didn’t deter other girls. Previously only allowed shopwork or domestic service, they worked 12-hour shifts mixing dangerous chemicals to make high explosives, assembling shells, grenades and bullets.

Others operated made parts for howitzers, machineguns, depth-charges, and tanks.

Women were recruited by Holmans in Camborne, National and J&F Pool in Hayle, Nobel at Perranporth, Bickford-Smith in Redruth because male workers had quit to enlist. Only paid half as much (£2 2s 4d) as the men, it was still double what they earned before.

Chemicals in cordite or TNT were seriously bad for their health – it turned their skin yellow, so much so they were also dubbed “the canaries”.